The Bechdel Test
Below is my list of movies/TV shows that pass the Bechdel Test, because I am getting kind of sick of watching media with nothing but boys all the damn time. Please feel free to add something by leaving a mention in the comments — tell me the name of the movie, and what the female characters discuss.
For those of you who don’t know, to pass the Bechdel Test, a movie must fulfill the following three requirements:
- It has to have at least two women in it,
- Who talk to each other,
- About something besides a man.
I’ll give you five seconds to think of one. Does that seem unfair? Okay, five seconds to think of a movie that has two men who talk to each other about something other than a woman. Easier?
Welcome to sexism!
- Shakes the Clown. Two female characters discuss their future career plans (bowling and chef, respectively), and later discuss flan.
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I can think of several Pedro Almodovar movies that would pass that test, but I’m not sure if I should suggest them, because in some of them, the female characters’ motivations can be traced back to something a man did (get them pregnant and leave, die, cheat). However, that said, they are indeed full of plenty of conversations between women about topics other than men. There are also characters who are not straight and/or who have different definitions of gender than the general population. Two of my favorites are All About My Mother and Volver.
All About My Mother is about a woman who, after her son dies, goes back to the city where he was conceived to try and find his father to let him know he even had a son in the first place. The father, however, doesn’t appear until the very end of the movie. Most of it is about all the other very interesting and somewhat messed-up women she meets, and what they all learn from each other.
Volver is about a woman trying to overcome the animosity she feels toward her mother, who she thinks is dead, and deal with what she thinks is the old-age dementia of her aunt (who keeps talking about having seen the mother), as well as her relationship with her daughter and her sister.
(I must admit, it did take me slightly longer than 5 seconds to think of these, though).
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Julie & Julia passes the test. Julia Child talks with her female friends a lot about cooking and publishing cookbooks; her conversations with her sister are sometimes about men but also about their childhood and parents. The Julie Powell character doesn’t talk to other women nearly as much in her segments, but she does talk to her female friends about her blog, about her career disappointments, and about how annoying her other friends are, and she talks to her mother about her blog. Not exactly shattering stereotypes about what women are interested in, but it nevertheless passes the test.
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Another just came to mind: The Official Story (La historia oficial), an Argentine film which won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 1986. It centers around Alicia, a woman who adopted a child during the military dictatorship (1976-1983) when it was not uncommon for the infants of “disappeared” political dissidents (or perceived political dissidents) who were born in clandestine prisons to be adopted out to military families and others connected to the regime (the biological mothers were generally then murdered). Alicia has refused to believe any such rumors, but in the years following the return to democracy gradually comes to suspect that her daughter, now 5 or 6, may have been such a child, and her husband may in fact know this to be the case. Most of her conversations in the film are probably with men (her husband, his male family members, her male colleague, her male students), but she has several important conversations with females. In addition to conversations with her daughter, she has conversations with her friend about the friend’s experience of being tortured during the dictatorship; she also talks repeatedly with a woman whose daughter was disappeared while pregnant and whom she comes to suspect is her daughter’s biological grandmother. Trigger warning for subject matter as described above + domestic violence.
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i think that ripley and vasquez talk to each other about the alien, in aliens.
in the day the earth stood still, jennifer connelly’s character talks to an unnamed female character about her cellphone. (yes, the bechdel test is really kind of a low bar.)
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“The September Issue” is a documentary about Vogue Magazine. The two main subjects are women, and they have multiple conversations with each other and with other women about their work.
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Girls Town: beating the shit out of a rapist while the three girls grow closer warms my heart.
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I thought about it quite a while and gazed at my DVD collection, but I have a few.
“Yesterday” – a South African movie about a woman who contracts AIDS trying to raise her daughter
“Thirteen” – they talk about boys a lot, but they talk about other things too
“Lost and Delirious” – so this one was made for Canadian TV, but it involves three female characters who talk a lot of two of the girls’ lesbian relationship and how cultural pressure completely messes them up
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Ginger Snaps. Two sisters speak of coming of age, bullies, and slowly becoming a werewolf.
Terms of Endearment. Hey, cancer and babies.
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Bound, in which the two female protagonists talk mostly about things other than men.
And oddly, the other one that pops into mind is Rabbit-Proof Fence.
Both of these are movies where the female characters exist for reasons other than having a romantic/sexual relationship with a male lead.
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“Gosford Park”, in which the many, many women speak to each other in nasty tones about money, class, propriety, which of the guests to watch out for because he’s a rapist (I suppose that fails #3), and that horrible dress you’re wearing.
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“Birds of Prey” was an awesome, though short lived tv series that was Batman’s version of Smallville. It revolved around three superheroines, one of whom was a wheelchair user, another of whom was a WOC, and the last of whom was a teenaged runaway from an abusive home. Each of the women had a love interest or two, but the romance took a major backseat to ass-kicking and world-saving.
Also, Harley Quinn as the Big Bad? WIN.
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“Big Business” with Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin. Also, “The Sound of Music.”
Also, “Girl, Interrupted.” And a recent release, although not a mainstream movie, is “Amreeka.” I can’t think of any newly-made Hollywood movies I’ve watched that pass the test…haven’t seen “Julie and Julia” yet. It amazes me how few movies actually do this.
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Transsiberian. Except for a gruesome torture scene, I thoroughly loved this.
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Also, Monster.
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The Avenging Quartet. Hong kong action film.
Also, 8 women. A french film that’s remarkable for failing the reverse test – as in, there are never two men having a conversation. This is mostly due to it only having a single man in it. He is still the focus of the plot, though he doesn’t get much screen time.
Then there’s Fun, which is about two girls. Not especially positive as a film though.
We sat down in the pub once and got a dozen or so examples, including Aliens. The important thing about the test though is not that you can find films that pass it, but that you have to work to do so. Whereas if you reverse the gender roles in the test it’s incredibly rare to find a film that fails.
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TV Series pass a bit easier than movies, though it depends on the series. A few examples:
Buffy: Buffy and Willow (and in later episodes Cordelia and Tara) talk about school, parents, and other monsters.
Vicar of Dibley: Geraldine (the Vicar) and Alice frequently talk about things other than men.
Ab Fab: Eddy, Saffron, and Patsy talk about everything. Whether Eddy and Patsy’s insanity is funny or maddening depends on the viewer
On the other hand, Coupling, which I adore, mostly has the women talking about the men (and vice versa).
Of course part of the beauty of the Bechdel Test is that it seems like such! a! low! bar! … except oh right it isn’t.
A few movies that come to mind and “squeaking in”:
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: McGonnigal talks with some of the students about the necklace.
Ferris Beuller’s Day Off: Sloan and the nurse talk about grandmother’s “death”.
Terminator 2: Sarah Conner and a woman security guard bargain over letting Sarah through the gate.
Then there’s Postcards from the Edge, which passes easily
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Stranger Than Fiction: a female writer and her professional muse discuss getting the damned book written, and suicide, and coffee.
The Two Princes: The child princess has an argument with an adult female trader about being caught out of doors.
…my god you’ve depressed me. HOW DID I NOT NOTICE THIS? D: I can’t even blame it on me watching barely any movies at all.
Oh! Spirited Away: female characters discuss work, the witch who’s their boss, the smelly humans, and being friends.
Whisper of the Heart: the main character talks chores and grades with her mother and big sister nigh-constantly.
The Cat Returns: the main character talks about escaping the cat world with her female kitty (who talks back), and she discusses tributes and rewards for saving a cat prince with another female cat. (95% of the characters are cats.)
My Neighbor Totoro: the two main characters talk about the sprites infesting their yard, visting their mother, trying to find a missing baby sister, and so on. If they have a conversation about ANY guy, it’s either a magical creature or their dad.
On the plus side, this has made me love Hayao Miyazaki and his girl characters all the higher. Thank you for giving me another reason to like him!
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Only one immediately comes to mind: The Joy Luck Club. The characters are mostly women. In one scene a mother and daughter talk about obedience, and chess; later female characters discuss an ad campaign, food, and family history.
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Sunshine Cleaning, two sisters with a decidedly bizarre cleaning business. This one also passes the *other* test (I can’t remember its name), much harder, where in a movie a women is a main character, and at the end she:
- is not dead
- is not in love or married or engaged or hooked up or whatever
- is happy.
Another one: Frozen River, about smuggling people across the border (and about the dream trailer home), also fits both bills.
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Drew Barrymore’s new movie, “Whip It” passes the test with flying colors. It was awesome.
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“Whip It” not only passes the Bechdel Test, it pretty much fails the male version. I can only remember three scenes with two guys talking: two of Dad and next-door-neighbor exchanging grunts about yard signs (the second of which is about Bliss, so it’s “guys talking about women”), and the scene where the Hurl Scouts coach gives the playbook to the other team’s coach (which is about derby, thus about women, thus, again, “guys talking about women”). Awesome.
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Stardust! The witch sisters talk about getting the star. Lamia and Ditchwater Sal talk about the star several times. Lamia and Evayne talk about Evayne’s health at the inn. Several women talk about Evayne dying if she steps into Wall.
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The version of the test I heard about was that the two female characters have to be named (i.e. have their importance made clear), so if that’s the case, I’m afraid the movie wouldn’t pass. :/
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Practical Magic.
More instances than are easy to call up off the top of my head. Sally talks to Gillian about her business, Gillian talks to Sally’s coworkers about Small Town Parent Drama, Gillian talks to Sally’s daughters about Sally, all the women characters talk to each other about their own pasts … It makes it pretty high over the Bechdel bar.
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_All About Eve_: Margo tells Eve not to do the dresser’s job; Eve is appropriately chastened.
_The Wizard of Oz_: Dorothy confers with the witches about the implications of dropping a house on someone.
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Death Proof. The girls talk about driving/buying fast cars and doing dangerous stunts with each other… although earlier in the movie, they do talk about guys. Sigh.
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Most of the Octavia Butler books that I’ve read so far. (She writes F/SF, so sometimes they’re talking about vampires or diseases from another planet, but still…)
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Year of the Dog – the main female character does display some strange/erratic behaviour but the film still gets a strong vote from me because besides passing the Bechdel test it also promotes raising awareness about the treatment of non-human animals and veganism!
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The Mike Leigh movie Secrets & Lies is mostly about mothers and daughters, and it’s amazing.
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Happy Go Lucky, another Mike Leigh film
Thelma and Louise
A League of Their Own
Coraline
Grey Gardens
Precious
And look–a list! http://bechdel.nullium.net/
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The Women!
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Kill Bill. Vengeance.
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The new Alice in Wonderland (directed by Tim Burton).
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I recently ran some of my favorite movies through the Bechdel Test. Here are my findings:
+ Mirrormask passes; the protagonist has a conversation well, fight actually, before there is spoiler brain tumor /spoiler, but ANYWAY with her mother.
+ Fight Club fails for somewhat obvious reasons I guess, and I think I will forgive it anyway.
+ I’m not sure if Across the Universe passes or not; I haven’t seen it recently enough to be sure, which I suppose reflects on it anyway.
(I’m not sure what the proper way to judge books, series of books, series of graphic novels, or TV shows is, but Dexter, with which I am infatuated, probably passes with more-or-less flying colors, and definitely does in the second season; and The Sandman does as well (you have Death, Despair, and Delirium, as recurring female characters go, and then there’s A Game Of You which does very well as this test goes, and so on, and parentheses-in-parentheses, neat!); to my vague amusement, the Dark Tower series doesn’t pass until book four, unless a conversation with an unnamed female character and the narrating (female) character’s husband (i.e. three people) counts? (That conversation mostly consisted of “You shouldn’t have shot him, it was his birthday!” “…what. What. What?” “…Look, we could shoot you if you want?” “I WILL BE GOING THEN”) …Then again that series spends a long time with only three or less people around, period… The Uglies trilogy passes pretty well, as other series I thought of randomly and know well enough go!)
Now comes the bit I’m vaguely embarrassed about (mostly for having enough of the movie memorized to do this off the top of my head). Repo! the Genetic Opera passes; you have Chase The Morning (omgwtfgodmother, contractual slavery, fun stuff) and some chunks of Zydrate Anatomy (hey, kids, let’s tell the sheltered teenager about drug addiction!).
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- Zombieland, Little Rock and Witchita have at least one boy-free discussion.
Other than that I KNOW there’s at least one movie I saw in the past couple of years that passed the Bechdel test with a fair amount of irony. But I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. Side effect of sexism and not watching many movies, I suppose.
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An obvious one is 30 Rock.
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A lot of kids movies pass this, probably because they don’t have romance in them, but I’m not sure if they count for the purposes of this. If they do, I would like to respectfully submit Eloise (the movies, although the books also count).
Other than that… The Incredibles (although Edna and Helen talk a lot about Bob, they do talk about other things as well), Little Women (romance is an important part of the movie, but the girls talk about plenty other than men), The Prince of Egypt (Zipporah and her sisters do talk about Moses, but as someone who fell down a well, not as a man), Mulan (it’s mostly in the context of going to see the Matchmaker, but it’s not directly about a man), Candleshoe (an old, but very good movie. Probably the most famous female conversation is the fight in the garden, between three girls, during which no men are mentioned, ever), She’s the Man (they talk about soccer), Chicken Run (tons of conversations about escaping, etc.), and Pocahontas (both to her friend and to Grandmother Willow). In TV shows, I can only think of Firefly (Kaylee/Inara talk a few times, I know, and I think River/Inara talk as well).
…this is so much harder than I thought it would be! In retrospect, a ridiculous amount of these are either children’s movies (like I mentioned earlier) or movies in which the conversation is related to men, but not directly about one.
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The short-lived TV show “Middleman” passes in every episode (all twelve of them, sigh), and in seven of those episodes, the Bechdel test is passed with at least one named female character who had not previously been in the show, one-offs and bit parts and the like.
(Middleman also passes the racial Bechdel test in terms of named non-white characters conversing, though I wouldn’t swear to every episode without rewatching them first.)
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Girl Interrupted. So good.
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Some cool graphics regarding the awesome number of female relationships in Buffy and Xena (and the dearth elsewhere): http://gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com/261238.html
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Southland Tales (one of my favorites). I can’t say that the female characters exactly match the male characters in number, but there are a lot of them, they vary in age and conventional attractiveness, and they converse with one another about plenty of things and occasionally kick some ass. mandy moore and sarah michelle gellar do almost have a catfight over duane johnson, and the main character is a dude, but you can’t have everything.
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I was going to say ‘Thelma and Lousie’ as the first example that springs to mind but katecoe raced me to it.
Firefly, Birds of Prey & Xena have been mentioned already too.
Perhaps Buffy – the original movie as well as the TV series & Angel also?
Sheera (sp?) – the children’s cartoon although that was set in the He-Man franchise ‘verse.
Catwoman – the movie with Halle Berry fits the bill I think? (Yes, I’m an SF fan.)
Book~wise, Isaac Asimov had a lot of robot novels featuring super-intelligent, acerbic Dr Susan Calvin (right last name? Typing from memory & don’t have books handy to check right now.) who was a major character who solved a lot of robot -related problems and discussed (& took steps towards solving!) serious political and social issues and was a great if sometimes flawed character in my opinion.
PS. Thanks for an excellent blog, much appreciated.
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All three Narnia movies released so far pass.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: Lucy and Susan decide to ask the trees to warn the army about Aslan’s death and the Witch’s approaching army. Earlier, I believe they had a conversation about whether or not Lucy had really been to Narnia (but maybe Peter was there too? I don’t remember.)
Prince Caspian: Lucy and Susan discuss how they feel about being back in Narnia; they also talk about why Susan didn’t see Aslan when Lucy did, which I suppose could technically be considered talking about a male, but I consider to be more a conversation about faith.
Voyage of the Dawn Treader: Lucy and the little girl discuss finding the little girl’s mother again. After a battle where Lucy fights, the little girl says she wants to be just like Lucy when she grows up, and Lucy tells her she should want to be herself when she grows up.
Bend it Like Beckham passes with flying colors: the women on the soccer team discuss soccer, culture, and sex; Jules and Jes discuss family and their plans for the future.
Dexter passes: Deb and LaGuerta discuss various murder cases; Rita and Deb discuss dealing with the aftermath of abusive relationships; I know I’m forgetting a lot here.
Touched by an Angel: the two female angels talk about faith, how to help people, etc.
Stick It: the girls talk about gymnastics, going to prom, etc.
Legend of the Seeker: Kahlan and Cara talk about their families, and strategize how to defeat their enemies.
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